Trump a Twitter rival? After ban, president says he's in talks with other platforms — or may launch his own
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President Trump on Friday said he is considering other social media platforms and may even create his own after he was banned from Twitter in the wake of Wednesday's U.S. Capitol riot.
He has also been blocked from posting on Facebook and Instagram — at least until his term ends.
"As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me," the president tweeted from the @Potus account instead of his personal @ReadDonaldTrump — which he almost exclusively used before the ban.
"Twitter may be a private company," the president continued,"but without the government's gift of Section 230 they would not exist for long."
The president went on to say he had predicted his words would be censored. Conservatives have long been complaining that social media sites like Twitter are biased against them in favor of liberals.
"We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future. We will not be SILENCED!"
A screengrab showing three tweets removed from the official @POTUS account
Finally, he accused Twitter of working against free speech and instead "promoting a Radical Left platform where some of the most vicious people in the world are allowed to speak freely."
"STAY TUNED!" he added.
FACEBOOK BLOCKS TRUMP INDEFINITELY AFTER CAPITOL RIOT RESPONSE
Twitter quickly removed the tweets from the @Potus account, citing its policy on banned users trying to circumvent it via other accounts.
Gab, a Twitter alternative that launched a few years ago and calls itself a "social network that champions free speech, individual liberty and the new free flow of information online," quickly took advantage of the moment.
Gab founder and CEO Andrew Torba, a Trump supporter, wrote on the platform that the site has seen record traffic since the president’s social media ban.
"More servers are being spun up as we speak," Torba wrote Friday. "Record traffic. Remember: we own our server hardware, it's not as easy as pressing a button on a cloud hosting provider, but we can't be banned from servers that we own! Please be patient. God is in control."
Back on Twitter, MySpace — the social media site that was popular in the early 2000s — began to trend.
Even MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson, who left the company a few years ago, tweeted a meme that joked "@MYSPACETOM ABOUT TO GET A NEW FRIEND."
Google also announced Friday that it would suspend social media platform Parler’s listing from its Play Store due to a failure to moderate "egregious content" posted by users related to the Capitol riot. Parler has become a popular Twitter alternative for many conservatives.
Apple was reportedly mulling similar action.
Fox News’ Michael Ruiz and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
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